It was often the regular-season game of the college
football season. In the first 10 years of the new SEC that added Arkansas and
South Carolina in 1992, either Florida or Tennessee represented the SEC East in every
conference title game.

Of course, in those years the
media world was a much different place. In 1995 when the No. 4-ranked Gators
and No. 8-ranked Vols met at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, the Internet was barely
on, no one had heard of a blogger, and if someone had mentioned an iPad, NASA
likely would have come to mind.

But if Sports Illustrated
showed up on campus for a game, everyone knew it was game-of-the-week worthy.
That was not in question.

Sports Illustrated senior
writer Tim Layden, who covered four consecutive Gators-Vols clashes from
1995-98, was on Tennessee's campus all week leading up to the '95 game. Layden
was in town working on a piece about Manning, who was in his sophomore season
and already considered a Heisman candidate.

Manning was a willing
subject.

"The kind of access you
would never get now with an A-list player,'' Layden said this week. "I
went to classes with him, the apartment he was living in with his buddies, the
film sessions, I was in the locker room before the game."

Layden accumulated enough
notes and quotes to write a book, so he would have no trouble writing a SI
cover story the following week.

Seated in the Ben Hill
Griffin Stadium press box high above the field, Layden watched as Manning threw
for 216 yards and Tennessee raced to a 16-point lead in the first half. Manning
was cooperating perfectly.

And then the story changed,
slamming on the breaks and heading the other way. Gators quarterback Danny
Wuerffel not only shredded Tennessee's defense, he took over the cover of
Sports Illustrated by leading the Gators to 41 consecutive points in a 62-37
win.

As Layden said, the Vols
"just got pounded."

So did that cover story on
Manning.

"I'm sitting in a Hilton
in Gainesville trying to write a Florida story with a notebook full of Peyton
Manning at midnight on that Saturday,'' he said. "It was brutal."

Gator fans loved the
"Attack of the Gators" cover a few days later. Saturday's
Florida-Tennessee game might not be SI-cover worthy, but it undoubtedly has a
buzz that has been lacking the last few years.

That's in part because Florida
has owned the rivalry of late. Consider this tidbit: Tennessee has not defeated
Florida since 2004 -- or before such staples of 2012 life like the iPhone and
Twitter existed. Facebook was just a few months old at the time.

The Gators take their
seven-game win streak over the Vols into Neyland Stadium on Saturday night in
perhaps the most-anticipated matchup in the rivalry since the Lane Kiffin-Urban
Meyer feud in 2009,

Still, that was only a brief
awakening.

You have to go back to the
'90s and early 2000s for a game that offered as much intrigue as this year's.

This year feels different as
both programs appear on more solid ground than the past couple of seasons. Both
bring 2-0 records into the game and both are ranked when they play for the
first time since 2007.

ESPN's "College
GameDay" even decided to come to town, setting up shop right off Peyton
Manning Pass near the stadium.

Gators coach Will Muschamp
lives by the motto of "the most important game is the next game," so
don't expect him to wax poetic over a rivalry that appears alive again.

Still, he can relate to the
excitement that has built this week toward kickoff.

"They were two of the
top 5 teams in the 90's, basically the third Saturday in September, whoever won
that game had the leg up in the East,'' Muschamp said. "A lot of great
players, great coaches, what Spurrier did here in the 90's has been unmatched
as far as his success in a 12-year run."

UF historian Norm Carlson has
been a part of the game since his days as a UF student in the 1950s. There is
one characteristic that makes the Florida-Tennessee rivalry unique in his mind.

"The cross-traffic is
unique,'' Carlson said. "That added to the competitive nature of the
series. There have been so many things in this rivalry that are unique."

Consider that former Gators
coach Bob Woodruff, also Florida's athletic director at one point, later served
as Tennessee's AD. While at Tennessee, Woodruff hired former Gators
quarterback/defensive back Doug Dickey as head coach.

When Gators coach Ray Graves
opted to retired after the 1969 season, Florida hired Dickey. The move upset
Woodruff enough that he passed on an invitation from the Sugar Bowl that year
and placed the Vols -- and their outgoing coach Dickey -- against Graves and
the Gators in the Gator Bowl.

Florida won 14-13 in what
would have been a monumental matchup if Twitter and social media existed then
like now.

Florida linebacker Jon Bostic
doesn't have to be reminded of the significance of the Florida-Tennessee game.
Bostic hopes to finish his career undefeated against the Vols with a victory
Saturday, but that doesn't mean the rivalry isn't a rivalry in his eyes.

"You never really want
to lose," Bostic said. "Going into the season, it's one of the games
on the schedule that's always circled. It's pretty much a statement game."

And for the first time in a
while, both programs have an opportunity to make a statement on Saturday night.
Tennessee, coming off back-to-back losing seasons under head coach Derek
Dooley, is aware of what's at stake.

The Vols need a win like this
to show they are on their way back. If the Gators win, they can take another
step in the right direction after a big road win at Texas A&M last week.

"This is going to be a
little new for us,'' Dooley said. "But it's good. This is where you want
to be."

After
covering the Gators' lopsided victory at The Swamp in '95, Layden was in
Knoxville the next year.

That
was the year Manning was finally going to break through against the Gators, who
had played in the national title game the previous season but lost to Nebraska.
Some wondered if Florida had missed its golden opportunity with Wuerffel.

Florida
dominated as Wuerffel threw four touchdowns in the first 20 minutes of the game
and the Gators led 35-0 in a 35-29 win.

Same
old story. The Gators went on to win the national title and Tennessee had to
take a wait-till-next-year approach once more.

"These games had this Armageddon feel to them,''
Layden said of the rivalry in the '90s. "At the time the whole series had
this feeling of validating and legitimizing a team's season, right on that one day
in September.

"Those games defined Steve Spurrier and Peyton Manning as
college figures. And Danny Wuerffel too, but Spurrier kind of overwhelmed that
program at that time. And it defined Fulmer too, although he got a national
championship in '98, I'm sure it will be in the second paragraph of his
obituary that he couldn't be Spurrier."

Only time will tell if Florida-Tennessee can approach the national
appeal it once had. Saturday night is a good place to start.

And the rivalry once again has some unique
"cross-traffic" as Carlson likes to call it. Muschamp played at
Georgia. Dooley is the son of legendary Bulldogs coach Vince Dooley, someone
longtime Florida fans would soon forget.

If the two programs can reignite the rivalry to a national stage
regularly, more made-for-the-digital-age fun is certainly ahead.

"It's kind of odd that something like that would happen,''
Carlson said. "It's an interesting twist."